General Discussion

Until this revelation, I thought this was nothing-- just a heritage (even if from the distant past) she was proud of, and not anything from which she directly benefited (or tried to benefit)... but it was weird to put that down as how she actually identified herself... and even if she didn't actually benefit, did she think it might provide some kind of advantage?

Like... my dad said his grandmother in Mississippi looked like a "squaw" (HIS words!)... and I was led to believe I have some amount of Native American ancestry. (Not that anybody in my racist family was celebrating that heritage!) When I lived in Vermont for four years (as a young, poor single mother), I wondered/joked if I had enough Native American ancestry to qualify for (what I heard was) free tuition for Native Americans at Dartmouth, and I had also "heard" (undoubtedly, from no one with any expertise) that to qualify as Native American, you had to have 1/16th ancestry. This was in the 1970s, and I obviously had no concept of tribes (or anything else)... and no evidence that what my dad said was true... and I never investigated that claim and haven't tried the DNA testing... and I never actually applied to Dartmouth (but instead moved back to CA to attend Berkeley as the white woman I am!)... but despite my little fantasy about attending Dartmouth tuition-free, I never would have identified myself as Native American. I mean, maybe if my family had proudly celebrated that heritage (as Warren's family apparently did), if there were multiple boxes to check, I might have included Native American... but not as the sole (or major) way of identifying myself. It does feel like she thought she might benefit in some "diversity" way.